Dyeing Clothespins with Household Objects

In my glittered clothespin vs. plain clothespin debate, plain won out, mainly because you guys thought the effort of glittering them wasn’t worth it (and I agree!). But when I read that people have dyedclothespins with food colouring successfully, I thought I’d give it a shot, because soaking pins in hot water isn’t really a big challenge.

To be totally honest, this project didn’t work out quite the way I wanted, but I think it could work really well for someone else, so I wanted to share!

Basically, all you need is pins, hot water, and food colouring. I started with two cups of microwaved water and about 10 drops of yellow colouring, poured over my pins in a bowl.

The dye is where I went wrong—because the pins were already sort of yellow-ish, they weren’t taking on anything with just the yellow dye. I thought maybe an orange-r colour would work better, so I added some drops of red and rewarmed the water, but I went a bit too far with the red dye and my pins ended up peachy pink after soaking for an hour or so.

I don’t really care that they’re pink, though. Not everything has to match!

I imagine if you used a heavier duty dye than food colouring yellow would work, but you’ll get muted colours using this method. Still, if you want blue or green or purple or pink, it’s worth a shot!

I bought the same mini clothespins, strung them all on fishing line and sprayed half of them gold and half silver with the Krylon Glitter spray paint. I tied them up between 2 folding chairs and separated them just a bit so they wouldn’t stick. It worked like a charm!

@MrsACarpenter: There’s a little bit of vinegar in the mixture I used!
@Robin: Oh, that sounds like it’d be pretty! I’m at the point where I don’t feel like spending any more money, honestly, but had I done this earlier on I would’ve glittered them, I think.